LASHKAR GAH – Afghan insurgents launched attacks in provincial capitals in the country’s north and south yesterday while foreign troops handed over security control in another key city as part of a process designed to display the strength of Afghan forces.
Gunmen attacked a police station in southern Kandahar city and killed its commander during a nine-hour gun battle.
In northern Mazar-i-Sharif – one of seven areas to be handed over to Afghan control this week – a bomb planted on a bicycle killed up to five civilians, including a child, and wounded up to 12, police said.
The attacks in volatile Kandahar and relatively less violent Mazar-i-Sharif were a reminder of the challenges facing the Afghan army and police as they kick off a transition that aims to put them in control of the country by the end of 2014.
“Three policemen were killed and six more wounded when two gunmen attacked police district one,” Abdul Razziq, chief of police in Kandahar province, said after the fighting ended and the two Taliban gunmen were killed.
Soon after the Kandahar attack, Afghan forces took control of security in Lashkar Gah, the capital of neighbouring Helmand province and the most contentious of the areas to be handed over this week. Mazar-i-Sharif is due to be handed over on Saturday.
Elyas, a resident of Changeer, some 20km north of Lashkar Gah, said he looked forward to the transition expanding and the departure of foreign troops. “If someone fires from a house, foreign forces destroy the entire village, they come for investigation during the night . . . which has made life for people difficult,” he said.
Speaking after the Lashkar Gah handover ceremony, Afghan defence minister Abdul Rahim Wardak described Afghanistan taking control of its own security as “a restoration of our honour”.
President Hamid Karzai has long said he wants Afghanistan to provide its own security. Western nations, tired of the cost of the war in lives and money, are racing to beef up Afghan forces so their troops can return home.
However, worsening violence in recent days has cast a shadow over the start of the transition. On Tuesday, a bomb exploded near a police station outside Lashkar Gah.
Afghan and foreign officials acknowledge there will be little real change on the ground, after a months-long “soft opening” when Afghans were already in effective control.
But Helmand has been the site of some of the most vicious fighting of the near-decade long war. Far more foreign troops have died there than in any other province and there are still several Helmand districts dominated by the Taliban.
“I’m happy,” Nawid, a resident of Lashkar Gah, said of the handover. “Now Afghans will do the house-searching and operations. People were tired of house-searching and operations launched by foreign troops.”
Transferring the capital is meant to give a signal that Afghan forces are ready and willing to take over in areas more challenging than the anti-Taliban provinces of Bamiyan and Panjshir, which are also in the first phase of transition.
“We are confident and our forces are capable of doing it, to take responsibility . . . this is just the beginning,” Afghan army colonel Amin Jan told reporters before the handover ceremony.
Like many others, however, Col Jan questioned whether the plan for foreign combat troops to leave by the end of 2014, proposed by Mr Karzai and agreed at a Nato summit in December 2010, was too short a timeframe. “Four years is a very short time. We still lack some equipment,” he said.
A civil ceremony with speeches in Lashkar Gah was followed by a military ceremony. – (Reuters)